GoatVote!

Basically, GoatVote is a system for the gathering of ideas and helping strong arguments to float to the top so that informed decisions can be made up here at the office. We want to be able to get input from the community on issues, but it's really hard to wade through hundreds of comments when only some are relevant and useful. GoatVote aims to fix that.

The system is built on top of the existing poll system. When Brad (or whoever) wants to have a vote, he creates a poll of a certain format:

- Name of poll begins with "GoatVoat:"- First question is a radio question- Second, third, fourth, etc questions are text entry questions

Then, they post this poll somewhere for people to read it. People who see the poll are encouraged to think about the issue, read the comments, and decide on their position. If they find some comments that they really agree with, then they can copy the URLs to those comments (by using the "Link" address) or write their own comment and copy the URL to it. Then, the user should fill out the poll, selecting their position and pasting the appropriate URLs for comments into the text entry boxes.

A GoatVote can have at least one but as many as necessary text entry fields. It's completely flexible in that regard. The first question can also have as many sides as it wants, up to the limit that the poll system itself imposes.

As people start filling out the poll, the system will keep track of the popularity of the choices and the URLs being used to promote these choices. When you visit the GoatVote results viewing page, you will be able to see a list of all of the options being considered along with the 10 most popular URLs supporting those sides, the 10 most popular URLs in the last day only, and the 10 most recent user submitted URL sets.

What I need from the development community is people who can test this out. It modifies a bunch of the poll stuff, including some poll infrastructure, so I need people to test it out and see if it works. Test using GoatVote itself as well as using regular polls. Everything you can think of relating to polls.

Of note are the rules for a poll to be a GoatVote poll. See above. Also note that the person posting the poll must have the sitemanage:goatvote privilege. Else, it's a regular ol' poll with no magic pixie dust.

Thanks!

Update: If you want to test this out but you don't have access to setting up your own LJ code, crschmidt has setup his goathack account with the updated files.